Al Qaeda in Europe

by Lorenzo Vidino

  11. Ibid.

  12, Ian Johnson and David Crawford, "A Saudi Group Spreads Extremism," Wall Street Journal, April 15, 2003.

  13. Notes taken by a source of the author at the Rotterdam trial.

  14. "Het raadsel van de al Qaeda-duikers," Rotterdams Dagblad, June 5, 2003.

  15. "Wide-Ranging New Terror Alerts," CBS News, May 25, 2002.

  16. "Het raadsel van de al Qaeda-duikers." Notes taken by a source of the author at the Rotterdam trial.

  17. "Grote leider en oprichter criminale Jihad-organisatie ontbreekt in Rotterdam," Rotterdams Dagblad, May 15, 2003.

  18. "Ha, daar heb je het al Qaeda Diving Team," Rotterdams Dagblad, May 12, 2003.

  19. "Grote leider en oprichter criminale Jihad-organisatie ontbreekt in Rotterdam."

  20. Tribunal of Rotterdam, Indictment of Mohammed Ramzi and others.

  21. DIGOS, Report 24640/01, Turin. Date unspecified.

  22. Alberto Custodero and Carlo Bonini, "Cellula di Al Qaeda a Torino. La Procura: `Arresti impossibili," La Repubblica, January 31, 2003.

  23. "Terrorismo, a Torino decise altre sette espulsioni," La Repubblica, November 18, 2003.

  24. Frank Viviano, "Killing Exposes France's Racial Divide," San Francisco Chronicle, October 27, 1995.

  25. Scheherezade Faramazi, "France, a Past Victim of Terrorism, Doesn't Pull Punches in Fighting Back," AP, December 11, 2004.

  26. Ibid.

  27. "Frenchman Jailed for Terror Ties," BBC, May 25, 2004.

  28. "We French Don't Understand Your Way of Fighting Terrorism," Telegraph, February 27, 2005.

  29. Whitlock, "French Push Limits in Fight on Terrorism."

  30. "We French Don't Understand Your Way of Fighting Terrorism."

  31. Ibid.

  32. Richard Ford, Philip Webster, and Stewart Tendler, "Terror Laws in Disarray as Suspect Is Let out of Prison," Times, March 11, 2005.

  33. Jeff Edwards, "Beyond the Law," Mirror, December 17, 2001.

  34. Ibid.

  35. Ford, Webster, and Tendler, "Terror Laws in Disarray."

  36. "We French Don't Understand Your Way of Fighting Terrorism."

  37. Brendan Bourne, "Up to 200 Al-Qaeda Terrorists in Britain," Sunday Times, March 6, 2005.

  38. Ford, Webster, and Tendler, "Terror Laws in Disarray."

  39. Ibid.

  40. "UK Anti-terrorism Law Approved," Reuters, March 11, 2005.

  41. Prime Minister Tony Blair's Press Conference, August 5, 2005, http:// www.number-IO.gov.uk/output/page8O4l.asp.

  42. Ibid.

  43. "Undercover in the Academy of Hatred," Times, August 7, 2005.

  44. Aatish Taseer, "A British Jihadist," Prospect magazine, no. 113, August 2005.

  45. Amnesty International, Press Release, July 20, 2005. Despite opposition, on August 10, 2005, the British government announced it had signed the agreement with Jordan. Under the agreement, Jordan is bound to guarantee that a deportee would not be tortured or otherwise mistreated and would not face the death penalty.

  46. Prime Minister Tony Blair's Press Conference.

  47. "Blair's Extremism Proposals Attacked as the Hunt Continues for Terror's New Breed," Times, August 7, 2005.

  48. Stephen Castle, "Secret Service Link to Film-maker's Killing," Inde- pendant, January 11, 2005.

  49. Stefano Dambruoso, Milano Bagdad; Diario di un magistrato in prima linen nella lotta al terrorismo islamico in Italia (Milan: Mondadori, 2004), p. 23.

  50. David Rising, "Terror Groups Said Working in Europe," AP, March 5, 2005.

  51. Dambruoso, Milano Bagdad, p. 23.

  52. Ibid., pp. 54-55.

  53. Many believe that al Qassimi was actually handed over by the Croatians to the United States, which brought him to Egypt on a US Navy vessel.

  54. Peter Finn, "Europeans Tossing Terror Suspects out the Doors," Washington Post, January 29, 2002.

  55. Ibid.

  56. "CIA Flying Suspects to Torture," CBS News, March 6, 2005.

  57. Ibid.

  58. Indictment of Nasr Osama Mustafa Hassan, Tribunal of Milan, June 23, 2005.

  59. Paolo Biondani, "I pm di Milano: arrestate gli agenti della CIA," Corriere Bella Sera, June 24, 2005.

  60. Indictment of Nasr Osama Mustafa Hassan.

  61. Douglas Jehl and David Johnston, "Rule Change Lets C.I.A. Freely Send Suspects Abroad," New York Times, March 6, 2005.

  62. "CIA Flying Suspects to Torture."

  63. Shaun Waterman, "Egypt Admits US Hands over Terror Suspects," UPI, May 18, 2005.

  64. The phrase was introduced into the official language of US politics by Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass), who, in February 2005, introduced a bill to eliminate the practice of renditions.

  65. Elisabeth Bumiller, David E. Sanger, and Richard W. Stevenson, "Bush Says Iraqis Will Want G.I.'s to Stay to Help," New York Times, January 28, 2005.

  66. "CIA Flying Suspects to Torture," CBS News, March 6, 2005.

  PART II

  THE ALGERIAN NETWORK

  CHAPTER 4

  THE ALGERIAN NETWORK

  AND ITS ORIGINS

  We must destroy Rome. The destruction must be carried out by sword. Those who will destroy Rome are already preparing the swords. Rome will not be conquered with the word but with the force of arms. Rome is a cross. The West is a cross and Romans are the owners of the cross. Muslims' target is the West. We will split Rome open.

  -Sheik Abu Qatada, "spiritual leader" of al Qaeda in Europe

  When, on a cold day of January 2003, Greater Manchester police agents entered a run-down red-brick house in the city's northern suburbs looking for an Algerian asylum seeker, they did not expect to encounter any particular problems. Even though they knew that the man might be connected to terrorists, the police carried out the raid unarmed, as used to be tradition in Britain. After detaining the young Algerian, police found, to their surprise, that the man had two roommates, also from North Africa, who were staying in the house.' For more than an hour police quietly searched the apartment while waiting for the results of the background checks on the other men. But suddenly, one of the two roommates grabbed a kitchen knife and engaged the unarmed cops in a violent struggle. The fight lasted several minutes; when it was over, Detective Constable Stephen Oake, a forty-year-old father of three who had occasionally served on Queen Elizabeth's and Prime Minister Tony Blair's detail, was fatally wounded, with multiple stab wounds to the chest.

  Stephen Oake's killing represented the dramatic conclusion of a plot hatched by a group of terrorists trained in the Caucasus to carry out attacks in Europe. But it also represented the last act of an extremely well-organized network of Algerians that had established a massive presence in Europe and had been behind the vast majority of terrorist activities in Europe throughout the 1990s.

  The roots of this network are to be found in the Algerian civil war. The former French colony had supported a fervent Islamist scene in the 1980s, when thousands of young volunteers traveled to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets and then came back to Algeria more radicalized and eager to fight for the establishment of an Islamic state. A homegrown movement, the Armed Islamic Movement-led by Mustafa Bouyali, a veteran of the war of independence against France-had also been actively advocating the violent overthrow of the secular Algerian government and the introduction of Islamic law. These and more moderate forces came together in 1989, forming the Islamic Salvation Front (Front Islamique du Salut, or FIS), an Islamist party. By the end of 1991, FIS had become Algeria's largest party and was poised to win the national elections. Alarmed by the real possibility that an Islamist party could rule the country, the Algerian military, which has a strong tradition of secularism, canceled the elections scheduled for January 1992, preventing the likely shift of power. The reaction of the Islamists to what was in effect a coup d'etat was extremely violent, and the country plunged into a brutal civil war, which according to conservative estimates has caused at least a hundred thousand deaths over more than ten years
. Soon after the beginning of the conflict, a new, more radical group, the Armed Islamic Group (Groupes Islamiques Armes, or GIA), was created. FIS members never completely closed the door to a peaceful solution with the government, but the GIA was against any compromise and embarked on a campaign of terror.' Within a few months, the GIA had supplanted the FIS as the main Islamist group fighting the Algerian government.

  While fighting a brutal war at home, the GIA also established a solid presence in Europe. The first wave of GIA supporters settled in France, joining the hundreds of thousands Algerians who were living in the suburbs of the country's main cities. GIA members created an extensive network that supplied the "brothers" fighting in Algeria with weapons, money, and false documents. But when the GIA targeted French interests and citizens in Algeria, Paris decided to crack down on the network. At that point some of the key members of the GIA left France for London. Even though the United Kingdom did not have a large Algerian community, its tradition of tolerance toward refugees and its extremely liberal attitudes toward Islamic radicals made London a perfect choice.

  When, in September 1994, Jamal Zitouni became emir (military leader) of the GIA, the conflict with France escalated, as he decided to take the battle inside France.' On December 24, 1994, four members of the GIA hijacked an Air France jet in Algiers. The plane landed in Marseilles; a French antiterrorist unit stormed the plane and killed the four terrorists, who had killed three hostages.' Reportedly, in what could have been a gruesome anticipation of 9/11, the hijackers had planned to crash the plane into the Eiffel Tower.' For the first time, Islamist extremists took their jihad to Europe.

  The summer of 1995 witnessed a bombing campaign that bloodied French streets. Eight bombs, detonated throughout the summer in metro stations, markets, and other public places chosen "to maximize civilian casualties," claimed the lives of twelve people and injured hundreds. Fingerprints left on unexploded devices led investigators to Khaled Kelkal, the alleged leader of a group of French-born Algerian militants who acted on behalf of the GIA.6 The subsequent investigation revealed a wide network that encompassed not just the French cities of Paris, Lyon, and Lille but also London.

  That radicals living in the British capital were involved did not surprise French authorities, who had been paying close attention to the activities of GIA operatives in London. As early as 1994, French authorities had found several fax numbers linked to London addresses when they raided the residences of suspected Algerian terrorists in Paris. Some of them were con nected with the Finsbury Park mosque, located in a northern London neighborhood with a large Muslim immigrant population.' The importance of this mosque, which became the unofficial headquarters for Algerian terrorists in Europe, will be analyzed in more depth in chapter 6. One of the Algerians in London being monitored by French authorities was Rachid Ramda; Paris has been unsuccessfully seeking his extradition from the United Kingdom for his involvement in the 1995 bombings since 1997.

  As early as the beginning of 1996, British newspapers speculated about a link between the Algerian network and a little-known Saudi millionaire, Osama bin Laden. There were unconfirmed reports that Ramda was receiving cash from bin Laden.' Ramda, who the French believe is one of the financial brains of the GIA's European network, was actively involved in the publication of Al Ansar, a weekly newsletter that reproduced GIA's communiques and thus was the organization's official mouthpiece in Europe. Originally published in France, the magazine was moved to London, in a country that "allowed more freedom of speech," after its publishers came under pressure from the French authorities.9

  Most of the radicals who became involved in the Al Ansar newsletter were regulars at the Finsbury Park mosque. The newsletter became a magnet for terrorists, drawing not just Algerians but also Islamic extremists and activists of other nationalities who worshiped at the London mosque. In fact, the newsletter's two editors were a Palestinian, Omar Mahmoud Othman, and a Syrian with Spanish citizenship, Mustafa Setmariam Nasar.10 In the following years both men would gain importance in the Islamist network, becoming two of al Qaeda's most important ideologues and leaders in Europe. Othman, who is better known as Abu Qatada, has been called al Qaeda's "spiritual ambassador to Europe" and "the spiritual leader of European Salafists"11 and has been detained by British authorities since 2002. Nasar, who is better known by his nom de guerre Abu Musab al Suri, became a trainer in an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan and is suspected to be one of the masterminds of the bombings of four commuter trains in Madrid in March 2004.12 He is also considered one of the chief ideologues behind Abu Musab al Zarqawi's campaign in Iraq, providing him with religious guidance and justifications for his attacks. Other individuals that participated in the publication of the newsletter also later became involved in terrorist plots.

  By 1997 the savagery of Algeria's civil war had escalated: GIA militants were massacring entire villages, including women and children. Their indiscriminate and senseless tactics had completely lost the GIA the support of the vast majority of Algerians. The militants in London were also deeply concerned about the GIA's brutal actions. When, in August 1997, the GIA issued a communique accusing the Algerian people of being infidels and apostates, its London supporters decided to distance themselves from the organization." Such a statement was a declaration of war against the entire Algerian population, as the punishment for apostasy, under the strict interpretation of Islamic law embraced by the GIA, was death. It was thus a religious justification for the indiscriminate killing of civilians.

  Most of GIA's European supporters decided not to follow the group's line. They had no problem with the killing of "infidels" (Christians and Jews) or of Muslims who worked for the "apostate" Algerian government, but they viewed the latest declaration as a huge strategic mistake. Qatada and al Suri, along with two terrorist organizations, the Egyptian Gamaa Islamiya and the Libyan Armed Group, withdrew their support from the GIA because it was guilty of "deviations in the implementation of jihad."14 The leaders in Finsbury Park understood that it was impossible for a movement that had embraced such a destructive philosophy to one day rule the country. As Abu Hamza, the one-eyed imam of Finsbury Park, wrote in his book The Khawaarij and Jihad, the GIA had been "one of the most terrifying groups to the kuffars [infidels] this century," but it ended up "being Genghis Khan versus the Muslims."'s

  After their formal denunciation of the GIA, members of the Ansar group and worshipers at the Finsbury Park mosque were threatened by militants loyal to the GIA.16 But their threats were hollow, as the GIA was losing support both in Algeria and in Europe. The time was ripe for the creation of a new group, and in 1998 a former GIA commander, Hassan Hattab, decided to form the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (Groupe Salafiste pour la Predication et le Combat, or GSPC).17 In his first communique, Hattab condemned the wholesale slaughter of civilians by the GIA and pledged to continue the armed jihad against the "infidel" Algerian government without harming civilians.'8

  By creating a group that had an ideology very similar to the GIA's, but at the same time condemning the GIA's indiscriminately gruesome tactics, Hattab immediately gained the sympathies of the Finsbury Park radicals and their followers throughout Europe.19 The recruiting and fund-raising network that for years had helped the GIA gave its full support to Hattab instead. In a very short time, the GSPC eclipsed the GIA and became "the most effective armed group inside Algeria."20 Moreover, the GSPC managed to avoid the internal disputes that had plagued the GIA. The GSPC has not strictly kept its pledge not to harm innocent civilians, and there are frequent reports of GSPC operatives setting up road blocks and shaking down bystanders for money, though it is a vast improvement over the GIA.21

  The GSPC completely replaced the GIA in Europe, where it had the opportunity to interact with other networks of radicals-particularly al Qaeda. According to several sources, bin Laden had a role even in the creation of the GSPC. Information gathered by an Italian court in 2004 revealed that the GSPC "was constituted with the approval and cooperati
on of Bin Laden."22 A former GSPC leader, Mohamed Berrached, testified that in the summer of 1998, Osama bin Laden had contacted Hassan Hattab, then a member of GIA. Bin Laden urged Hattab to form GSPC in order to give a better image of jihad.23 Others dispute the claim that bin Laden was involved in the group's formation.24

  What, in any case, is undeniable is that al Qaeda and GSPC have cooperated extensively for years. Hundreds of GSPC militants have trained in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, and, in return, the Algerian group has put its far-reaching European network at bin Laden's service. Over time, the GSPC, while not losing focus on its main enemy, the Algerian government, has increasingly embraced al Qaeda's global jihad. The commonality of the organizations' intentions and goals was made more public after 9/11. On September 15, 2001, the GSPC issued a communique in which it threatened to strike, especially in Algeria, "the interests of European countries and of the US."25 In addition, in late 2003 it officially proclaimed its allegiance to a number of jihadist causes and movements, including al Qaeda.26 Such announcements are hardly necessary, as the activities and the plots to which the Algerians have been linked from the late 1990s until today prove their close interaction and cooperation with other terrorist groups.

  Various events led the members of the GSPC to expand their focus from a regional struggle to a global jihad. Of particular importance was the return of hundreds of volunteers from the wars in Bosnia and Chechnya. In those two jihads, mujahideen from different countries met and built important alliances. As they fought together in defense of fellow Muslims, they realized that the struggle of one group was that of the entire Muslim Ummah (religious community). Algerians went to battle in such places as the Philippines, Kashmir, and Sudan, teaming up with likeminded militants.

  Another event that spurred this globalization of jihad was the formal creation in 1998 of the International Islamic Front for Jihad against the Jews and the Crusaders. This organization established and led by bin Laden brought together militants from throughout the world. As the Taliban, which had welcomed bin Laden in 1996, extended its power over much of Afghanistan, bin Laden found himself in indirect control of a country where his organization could flourish undisturbed. The Algerians and the GSPC, with their years of experience in jihad and their extensive European network, played a key role in bin Laden's project. Indeed, according to European intelligence officials, by the end of the 1990s bin Laden's global jihad had become more important than the Algerian conflict to many Algerian militants based in Europe.27 Their network cooperated so closely with his organization that the distinction between GSPC and al Qaeda, at least in Europe, became blurred.